Main Street March MadnessThe madness began at 7 a.m. Saturday. We’re not talking about the basketball March Madness that’s been raging across the country, but the repairs to the crosswalks in downtown Russellville. It’s on Main Street, it’s going to take a week, and it’s going to make a lot of folks unhappy, so why not try to make the best of it? The project will wrap up the afternoon of March 30, according to the State Highway and Transportation Department (AHTD). A ...

Franchise fees shouldn’t fund aquatic centerWe’re not keen on the idea of the city raising its franchise fee for any reason but definitely not to help fund the operation of the yet-to-be-built aquatic center. In case you don’t know, we all pay franchise fees that are tacked onto services like telephone, cable, water and natural gas. Take a look at one of these bills and you’ll see it as a line item. That “fee” is set by the city, and the revenue from those fees go into the city’s genera...

Flying below the radar a big threat to US prosperityOver the past several months and years, our nation’s leaders have grappled with major issues such as a nuclear threat from Iran, the death of four Americans in Benghazi, the war in Syria, radical Islam and Operation Fast and Furious. On the domestic front, issues such as Obamacare, the national debt, illegal immigration, entitlement programs and gun control dominate the headlines of our major newspapers, television newscasts and talk shows. Ho...

The insidious effect of political correctnessWhen I was in high school in Detroit, there was a great deal of emphasis on clothing. As I became increasingly interested in fitting in with the “in crowd,” fashion supplanted academic achievement in my hierarchy of importance. My grades plummeted, and I became a person who was less pleasant and more self-absorbed. My mother was disappointed because she thought I had enough insight and intelligence to avoid the flypaper trap of acting like eve...

What’s wrong with a meritocracy rug?Nothing, right? For much of my professional life, I yearned for an opportunity to be judged on the basis of my accomplishments, without regard to factors such as race or sex. In my version of the American dream, the country was a meritocracy that allowed you to succeed even if your mother was a secretary and a lot of people seemed to hate Jews. So how come so many feminists were angry about the “United Meritocracy of GitHub” rug that they ulti...

Highway Trust Fund must be fixedAdvertising for candidates for governor and U.S. senator from Arkansas thus far focuses mostly on inane arguments such as who is closer to Nancy Pelosi and who is the biggest threat to Medicare. Arkansas would be better served if the candidates would tell us what they will do about our crumbling infrastructure, especially the highway system. Arkansas is at a particular disadvantage with its highway system. You don’t have to drive far past any ...

‘The Triple Package’: A tiger of a bookProfessor Amy Chua of the Yale law school is better known as a “Tiger Mom” because of her take-no-prisoners, tough love approach to raising children. She and her husband Jed Rubenfeld (a fellow Yale law professor) have written what may turn out to be the best book of this year. It is titled “The Triple Package” because it argues that three qualities are found in spectacularly successful groups in America. These three qualities, they say, are a...

Letter to the editor (March 19, 2014)Russellville Parks I visited the Illinois Bayou Park at Dwight Mission the other day and walked its trail. It is a really nice trail that can be used for walking, running, biking and skateboarding. Congratulations to all those responsible. They did a good job of designing and building this new park. It is a wonderful addition to the local community. Samuel Andrews Russellville

Storms are over, but highway needs remainDirector Scott Bennett of the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department explained to legislators this past week why his agency was overwhelmed by the recent winter storms that turned Interstate 55 in northeast Arkansas into a parking lot. Bennett said the department lacked the resources to respond to the storm. The traffic tie-up is already a memory now that the weather is a little warmer. But the lack of resources — that’s going to conti...

Fiscal session leaves long to-do listLITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ third-ever fiscal session was dominated by debate about the future of the state’s compromise Medicaid expansion, but that may be nothing compared to the fights that await lawmakers when they return to the Capitol in 2015. From funding for pre-kindergarten to the condition of the state’s centers for the developmentally disabled, the session that formally ends this week leaves a long list of unfinished business for the Le...

Letter to the editor (March 18, 2014)Aquatic Center location The Wednesday, March 12 article discusses three possible sites for a proposed indoor aquatic center. The consultants recommended Vick Field, ranking it above the Boys and Girls Club and a site on North Phoenix Avenue. Reasons included for down rating the latter two sites included their having initial costs of $50,000 and $80,000 greater than Vick Field. The project has been estimated to cost about $8,400,000 which means...

Tensions rise over access to local governmentEDITOR’S NOTE — Sunshine Week, promoting the importance of access to public information, runs from March 16-22. It was a chilling crime and, even with a quick arrest, disturbing questions lingered. Derrick Thompson called 911 in the coastal Maine city of Biddeford to report that he had been threatened. Police checked out the complaint, decided it was a civil matter and left the scene; three minutes later, the teenager and his girlfriend were s...

On the age of EarthNot too long ago, American science educator, scientist and mechanical engineer William Nye, otherwise known as “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” participated in a public debate with Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum. Ham is what you call a “young earth” creationist — that is, a person who advocates a literal interpretation of Genesis and that the earth is about 6,000 years old, given the genealogies listed in the Old T...

Letters to the editor (March 15, 2014)Sweetheart Saturday Sweetheart Saturday is a two-hour event held the Saturday before Valentine’s Day each year at the Hughes Community Center. This 10th annual food-tasting event with a silent auction was recently held on a snowy Saturday, Feb. 8. For a $10 ticket, you have lunch from the tasting booths and lots of fun led by Johnny Story and Shelly Jones, Arkansas Hospice Volunteer Coordinator. These restaurants and individuals helped make it...

Crosswalk perspectiveWe’ve been asked why The Courier hasn’t commented on the downtown crosswalk issues of the last few months. Simply put, has there not been enough said already? Yes, it appears mistakes were made on the West Main bulb-out crosswalk project to the tune of $42,000 — no small amount to be sure. And we understand everyone “uses” the crosswalks when they drive on West Main, so it has become an important topic by sheer volume. However, we have some bi...

The national debt in perspectiveMy good friend Joe Heird, who retired after 40-plus years with the federal government, gave me something recently that really helped to place our national debt in perspective. Anyone in our country who is halfway informed knows that our national debt is now more than $17 trillion. Almost from the time I started writing this column back in 1995, I began to inform, or even warn, my readers that one of the major problems facing our nation was the...

Daring to love your dreamAlmost two decades ago, heartbroken and single, I wrote out a list that described the man of my dreams. Less than two years later, my husband and I married, proving that dreams do indeed come true (yes, he met and even exceeded all criterion). As a child, I spent hours staring up into the sky, watching the clouds, dreaming of what might be one day. As I grew older, I became more grounded in reality — the reality of college, graduate school, wo...

Hipsters have children, tooDisapproving of white urban liberals can be a career for right-leaning sociologists. A decade or two ago, their story was that the American future lay in fast-growing exurban counties, with their cheap land and virtuous Republican voters. Now that many American cities have become the hot, hot, hot place for jobs and ambitions, the story has to be rewritten. “Are cities without children sustainable?” ask Joel Kotkin and Ali Modarres in the cult...

The left vs. minoritiesIf anyone wanted to pick a time and place where the political left’s avowed concern for minorities was definitively exposed as a fraud, it would be now — and the place would be New York City, where far left Mayor Bill de Blasio has launched an attack on charter schools, cutting their funding, among other things. These schools have given thousands of low income minority children their only shot at a decent education, which often means their onl...

Hillary said to be sick — probably of the mediaIt was back on Jan. 27, 1998, when Hillary Clinton first used the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” to describe the attacks on her husband. She was appearing with Matt Lauer on NBC’s “Today,” the day after Bill Clinton had publicly stated: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” For Hillary, the Monica Lewinsky story was the last straw in what she firmly believed was a conservative conspiracy to get her husband. And...